Cruising (with) Class

About the Book

Many beginning sailors soon yearn for a larger boat - with a galley, head and berths - so they can extend their time on the water and range of action. However, the simple mechanics of sailing do not include the variety of arts necessary to cruise successfully.

Cruising (with) Class began as a series of lectures at the Sarasota (Florida) Sailing Squadron with the intention of teaching basic skills to beginning cruisers. Comfort on the water is not a matter of soft cushions. It comes from confidence in the ability to voyage safely.

Reading the weather, planting the anchor, calculating the tides, navigating a coast, avoiding fatigue, choosing equipment, coping with storms, reacting to disasters, these are the arts of a cruiser.

Although the book calls on the author's 25 years of cruising small sailboats, it is not a travelogue. Instead, it is a precise iteration of lessons learned the hard way, and presented in sailor-to-sailor fashion so others can avoid disaster and find comfort bred in confidence on the water.

About the Author

Stan Zimmerman is a reporter, editor and author. After covering government and crime in south Florida for a decade, he sailed to Washington, DC where he was a naval correspondent for his second professional decade. He has won awards from the National Press Club and Society For Professional Journalists, and a medal from the U.S. Naval Institute for his writing.

Zimmerman learned to sail in a 12-foot boat launched from the beaches of Siesta Key. He graduated to a 20-foot boat (El Guijo) and used it to circumnavigate south Florida (spending months in the Keys, Everglades and Ten Thousand Islands areas). His next boat was a 23-foot sloop (Big Bamboo), which he sailed to Washington and then cruised the Chesapeake extensively. His current boat is a 30-foot sloop, which has cruised the US East Coast and northern Cuba.